The in game cutscenes look great. Huge leap in storytelling for an RTS, with fully fleshed out environments and character models. No more zooming in on low polygon units while watching their character portraits talk!

I'm more of a fan of the multiplayer, but seeing how much resources and assets Blizzard put into the single player, I'm actually excited to play the campaign!

Awesome! Are those cutscenes or real game scenes?

Siftbot should make a cameo in this game.

>> ^Fletch:

More third-person, over-the-shoulder, consolized crap. I tried playing Metro 2033 recently. OMFG... terrible. Sixty seconds of fighting, and then ten minutes of cutscenes and searching for ammo around your "base". Repeat ad nauseum. Loved the old Star Wars PC games Ant referred to, but it seems nowadays PC ports are an afterthought, designed and dumbed-down for consoles and their idiotic controllers. Decent PC games (FPS) are few and far between. Oh well, guess I'll just go fire up Deus Ex, again.

i extremely and violently disagree with you regarding metro2033.
while that game might not have the most refined and advanced gameplay, if you haven't played this game to the end, you are missing out on one of the most atmospheric games ever!
and fuck console versions! this game was created on and for PCs! furthermore, to fully enjoy the game you gotta play it w/ Russian voices(obviously if you can understand it).
it is a completely different game from duesex. comparing those 2 will be doing a disservice to both!

More third-person, over-the-shoulder, consolized crap. I tried playing Metro 2033 recently. OMFG... terrible. Sixty seconds of fighting, and then ten minutes of cutscenes and searching for ammo around your "base". Repeat ad nauseum. Loved the old Star Wars PC games Ant referred to, but it seems nowadays PC ports are an afterthought, designed and dumbed-down for consoles and their idiotic controllers. Decent PC games (FPS) are few and far between. Oh well, guess I'll just go fire up Deus Ex, again.

>> ^mysdrial:

10-year-old gameplay and pretty cutscenes, here we come!
I hope I can just extract the cutscene movies from ths one....


Good gameplay doesn't become outdated. What are you going to complain about next? How Street Fighter 4's gameplay is so 1991? Or how Civ 4 is still turn based? Or how games still have deathmatch and CTF (So 1993!!!!!!!)?

Why play chess? Its gameplay is so 15th century.

Have you even seen the cool innovative stuff they're doing for the single player campaign or the power of the new map editor?

10-year-old gameplay and pretty cutscenes, here we come!

I hope I can just extract the cutscene movies from ths one....

>> ^entr0py:
>> ^mentality:
This sounds exactly like the kind of game that I hate playing: Shallow repetitive quests, bad story, time consuming. Red Dead is kind of like the anti-Portal.

Bad story? Did you get that from when he said the game was beautifully written? And I'd venture that almost no one who buys a $60 game wants it to last only 5 hours, as portal did. It's definitely not a casual or budget game. As for the MMOish quests, as he mentioned they're all optional.


You're probably right. I'm basing my thoughts more on Yahtzee saying this is just another Niko bellic with a change of setting, and DFT's opinion that the cutscenes are terrible. And by time consuming I mean I don't want to a significant % of my game time traveling and staring at a horse's ass. A game can be 60 hours long or 6 hours long, but if the quality is good then it doesn't matter. I'd rather pay $60 for 6 hours of an amazing game than spend $60 on a boring game with unlimited content. For example, you'd have to pay me money to play through GTA 3, as I consider free roaming shallow content games like that utter garbage.

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

I really like this game, but the story and cut scenes are terrible. It's the same kind of story telling Rockstar was doing in the 90's, which wasn't really even that good back then, but it feels really dated to me in the present. A couple hours into the game I just started skipping the lengthy cut scenes altogether with no regrets (except for not getting to seeing Icarus meet his doom off the edge of a cliff). I like digs at Bush and Blackwater as much as the next guy, but not so much in my western. If you are going to make a digital homage to the western, then crib from The Good, The Bad The Ugly, Once Upon a Time in the West, High Plains Drifter, The Magnificent 7, The Unforgiven, etc. Still a great game, but it would have been better with characters and a story that I cared about.


Wow. Did you even play the game?? The story is phenomenal (practically the entire internet agrees, even Yahtzee), the cutscenes are solid, and the list of films you cited is pretty much the exact list that they DID crib from.

Deus Ex remains to this day my favorite game of all time. I wasn't impressed by DX2 and I don't have particularly high expectations for the third, especially with regards to some of the gameplay features. (Call of Duty style health regeneration, a cover system (what's wrong with leaning?), focus on combat, etc).

Also, what's with all the recent games and tinting everything certain colors. It's certainly stylistic, but it definitely starts to wear on the eyes. You can make a cool looking game without the annoying tints. (And the yellow here is particularly harsh.)

In any case, I probably won't bother with the game, as it's going to be a console game ported to PC, and I've decided to swear off non PC-exclusive games. (Or at least, games that aren't developed for the PC first, consoles second.)

The trailer does look cool and all, hence my upvote, but Square cutscenes always look cool.

The normal way this "death charge" is accomplished in Versus mode - meaning the cheap, but within-the-rules way I regularly do it - is in the following manner:

1. After the survivors' cutscene has ended, wait for the first survivor to walk from the pier into the building. As soon as one survivor does so, all the survivors have officially left the 'safe room' (in this case, the pier is the safe room) which allows the special infected to spawn (so long as it's out of sight).

2. The instant the first survivor has entered the building, have the charger spawn on the roof. If any straggler lags behind to pick up weapons and health kits on the pier, immediately jump down and charge the survivor straight off the pier and into the ocean. Instant kill. This technique works if the survivor team is uncoordinated, someone is a straggler or one idiot survivor runs off ahead of the others which then allows the special infected team to spawn.

3. If the survivors are well-coordinated and move as a team into the building, have a jockey or smoker spawn on the pier and drag one backwards toward the pier. Let the other infected hold the survivor still and charge right through them both and off the pier. Instant kill.

4. If the survivors are well-coordinated and *prepared* for the death charge, they may send a survivor onto the roof to prevent special infected from spawning there (as specials cannot spawn where a survivor can see them). In that case, spawn whatever you can wherever you can and harass the team until someone can pull a survivor back.

In the meantime, this particular video should not technically be possible since the opening cinematic is still playing, thus proving the survivors are still on the pier and in the 'safe room' (meaning specials should not yet be allowed to spawn). We're seeing either bugs, hax or 'sploits.

(cue "The More You Know" theme music)

>> ^Tallguy:

Actually, I am pretty sure this is just post-game editing of video footage and not a real in-game event. Look for Rochelle to be visible briefly at around 17 seconds after the charger attack. I think they forgot to clean that up.


Id say the auto move function of the cutscene just wigged out for a second.

Looks like a director bug, or maybe some sort of hack/exploit

I think the whole point of this level is to get you to go wild shooting at civilians just to surprise you at the end by shooting you in the face when you expect a pat on the back. You do your best to blend in with the bad guys, in utter vain.

I knew I was an undercover agent before I started the mission, I knew I would have the opportunity to shoot or not shoot at civilians even before I laid hands on the game, yet since I didn't know the denouement of the mission the trick worked perfectly when I played it. It was one of those rare times I had mixed feeling about getting killed in a cutscene (I usually simply get angry). It worked way better than anything in the first game, although the rest of the story was shit.

I think it's important not only to notice the evolution in graphics in the warcraft videos, but the evolution in storytelling as well. The video from Wrath of the Lich King is vastly superior to the earlier Warcraft videos.

http://www.videosift.com/video/World-of-Warcraft-Wrath-of-the-Lich-King-Opening-Cinematic
http://www.videosift.com/video/World-of-Warcraft-Burning-Crusade-Introduction-Cutscene
http://www.videosift.com/video/World-of-Warcraft-Introduction
http://www.videosift.com/video/Warcraft-III-cinematics

I think the warhammer video you linked is sort of a mix of the first WoW video and the Wrath one. I think the warhammer universe is more awesome, but cinematically the Wrath video is superior. It's a close call, though.


>> ^southblvd:
Warhammer intros > Warcraft intros
e.g. http://www.videosift.com/video/Warhammer-Mark-of-Chaos-Intro-Cinematic

Well, most people are idiots with no patience, to the detriment of their life experience.

I would like to see numbers on what % of people watch the cutscenes in video games, at least the first time through. To me, there are two types of people... those who skip the cutscenes even the first time they play, and those who watch the cutscenes at least the first time through to get the story. If you're the first type, who always skips, GO EAT A COCK.

One of the only fantasy RPG conventions not included in Dragon Age is the thing about freedom--an open world to explore, where the main quest can get eclipsed by the much more interesting side quests. This was present in Oblivion, Morrowind, and the Baldur's Gate series, so I'm surprised no one's really commented on it. Dragon Age is incredibly focused on the main plot, which makes the few side quests totally out of place, such as helping an elf win over a girl he likes (while the horde of baddies just wiped out a neighboring town).

The physical area of the game seems tiny. There are less than 10 major areas to visit, and two of the towns I've seen so far have something like 10 buildings in them and 20 or so NPCs. It feels like I'm walking through Disney World. Within these small areas, you're always hemmed in to a single path much like the Final Fantasy series. While exploring a forest, you're stuck on the trails. What's so hard about making an open zone? Baldur's Gate 1 did it just fine.

The only way I can start to understand this game's appeal is by thinking back to Mass Effect, because I really enjoyed that game and the formula seems identical. I think the difference is originality and the script. Mass Effect was an original story (at least to me and most gamers) and the cutscenes were almost TV-worthy, whereas Dragon Age's story is familiar to just about everyone and is executed poorly.